Notes on Debrief
Last Saturday we had our first dual-team (i.e. including the Gulf Team) debrief from the Credo overseas mission teams…
Debrief is a vitally important part of short-term missions, but unfortunately something that has not been done by Credo particularly well in the past.
As far as I can see, there are a couple of big areas you need to deal with in debriefing a short-term mission (in no particular order):
(1) Cultural Re-Entry
The truth is, and as I’ve blogged about before, coming back from immersion in one culture into another is just plain weird. The transition can be very stark – say, from living in a bamboo hut for a fortnight with no running water to your five bedroom, centrally heated house in the ‘burbs – or more subtle, but almost everyone experiences some kind of discomfort in returning. Often it won’t be noticed until after the excitement of being home and telling all your stories is over, but the re-adjustment to how things happen in your home can take a while as you come to terms with putting aside cultural habits you worked very hard to absorb and slipping back into how you were raised to act – especially when you don’t want to!
(2) Worldview Integration
STM’s change you. They’re a very intense time of work, new experiences, and often struggles so you’re unlikely to come back the same as when you left. If nothing else the exposure to more of the variety in thinking, living, and relating in the world will help to round off your own way of thinking, living, and relating. All experiences like this give us insights into the relative advantages of the different ways of doing things, and one of the areas to think through is how to take the best of your experiences (say, the incredible hospitality to strangers in V-land) and integrate it into your worldview in your home country.
(3) Spiritual Development
Particularly when the mission takes the form that ours did (primarily Christian education), some spiritual growth is expected. We had the blessing of spending most afternoons deep in the Word preparing for lectures, and so were able to take our pick of the riches we learnt and shared together. Luke 15 and Isaiah 65 were some big passages for me this time around. As part of debrief it’s good to reflect on the things that you’ve grown in spiritually.
(4) Communication
How can we tell other people about the experiences we had? When people ask you “How was it?”, how can you get beyond, “Umm…good”?
(5) Personal Relationships
Most teams have a bit of debriefing to do on how they interacted while away. On top of that, re-entry can do funny things to your emotions and its good to have a chance to get some input on big emotional decisions if they happen close to your return.
I’ll post some of our written notes and debrief questions when we’re done :-)
Posted: Aug 10, 06:06 AM Category: Re-entry
Tags for this article: credo, cross-culture, re-entry